Like an unfortunate blind date, Emily Smith was accepted to attend a journalism workshop last summer until its directors found out one extra detail: the color of her skin. On Tuesday, her parents filed a class-action lawsuit against the program’s sponsors, including VCU, for discrimination.
Since 1984, VCU’s School of Mass Communications has held the Urban Journalism Workshop each summer for minority high school students interested in journalism as a career. The program accepted 15-year-old Monacan High School student Smith, who was then denied entry after she revealed on the phone she was white.
During the two-week workshop, students learn the basics of putting together a newspaper, such as reporting and layout, to produce their own 16-page paper in the process. While staying in VCU’s dorms overnight, participants work with Richmond Times-Dispatch reporters and editors during the day, obtaining journalistic experience they might not otherwise get.
“At my high school there wasn’t any school paper,” said Julian Benbow, a former UJW participant who went on to work for The Commonwealth Times, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and now the Boston Globe.
“The workshop taught me how to put things together, how to dig for information,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
Benbow said he might never have gotten into journalism if it were not for the workshop.
Benbow, who is black, made it into the program. Smith, a female, did not. While both blacks and females are often considered minorities in the newsroom, UJW defines the category by race and ethnicity.
The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Inc., a workshop sponsor, finances the VCU workshop and 25 similar workshops across the country as of 2005. As a condition for funding the programs, Dow Jones requires that everyone admitted must be a minority student. They classify minorities by racial or ethnic groups-black, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaskan Native.
“This program is blatantly unconstitutional,” said Center for Individual Rights President Terence Pell, who is also defending Smith in the case.
After the Smiths came to them for help in April, CIR filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Richmond on their behalf. Among the named defendants are workshop sponsors VCU, Dow Jones and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. School of Mass Communications professors June Nicholson and Bonnie Davis, the director and co-director of the program, respectively, are also targets of the lawsuit. Robert Holsworth, dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences is also included.
According to the lawsuit, the program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, along with several U.S. laws meant to uphold it.
CIR classified the lawsuit as a class action, extending the case beyond the Smiths to any other workshop applicants deemed non-minority students.
“There’s potentially hundreds of students that wanted to attend these programs,” Pell said. “The goal of the lawsuit is to get these programs opened up.”
The CIR received public notoriety for two similar cases in 1997 when they challenged the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy. By 2003, the cases reached the Supreme Court, which struck down the university’s use of a racial point system for admissions.
Pell said he feels this particular case against the workshop is strong.
When she was applying for the workshop, Smith was unaware of the specific definition of minority it held, Pell said. Smith first heard about the program in the spring of 2006 when she read an article in the Times-Dispatch advertising the workshop.
“The article said the workshop requested students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds,” Pell said. “Diverse could mean anything.
“After talking with her parents, Emily didn’t know what that meant,” he said. “So they decided to apply anyway.”
Pell said Smith had no reason to believe white students were not allowed. Smith also thought she might fit into the definition of a minority, either from being female or having muscular dystrophy.
While Benbow defended the program, he also has participated in other minority workshops where women were considered minorities.
“It all depends on how you define minority,” he said. “When I came to the Times-Dispatch, there was only one woman at the sports section. This is out of two-dozen people there total.”
Benbow did note, however, that some minorities are scarcer in journalism than women.
“As few women as there are in the newsroom, there’re even fewer people of color,” he said.
The application made no request for Smith’s race or ethnicity, Pell said.
As stated in the lawsuit, Smith mailed the application on March 20. On April 17, Bonnie Davis e-mailed Smith to tell her she had been accepted. Around April 25, Davis called Smith and asked to know her race. When Smith said she was Caucasian, Davis told her she could not participate in the program, Pell said. A couple of weeks later, Emily’s parents called CIR about their situation.
Pell’s first reaction was surprise.
“This one was pretty easy to look into because all of the info was on the Dow Jones’ Web site,” Pell said.
Whatever Dow Jones defined as a minority, however, Pell said giving preference to minority students was illegal. Since the Supreme Court case in 2003, other institutions have dropped similar preferential treatment for minorities, including Yale and Princeton Universities.
“It’s been illegal since Bakke in 1978 and very obviously illegal since Michigan in 2003,” Pell said. “Really there’s no reason why the people at Dow Jones and VCU wouldn’t have realized that this is unconstitutional.”
Of the accused “conspirators,” as labeled in the lawsuit, Holsworth said he first heard of the lawsuit Tuesday and the Department of Justice has yet to serve him a copy. Beyond that, he declined to comment on the case.
Nicholson and Davis, meanwhile, did not return phone calls at press time.
Whatever happens in court, Benbow said he hopes the lawsuit will not hurt the program.
“It’s obviously meant to help people,” he said.
According to the School of Mass Communications’ Web site, between 60 and 70 UJW participants have eventually enrolled at VCU. Others have gone on to the University of Virginia, Princeton, Harvard University and other prestigious universities. Many of these have gone on to successful careers in journalism.
The CIR’s goal, Pell said, is not to eliminate the program. Instead, he said he hopes for a court order to force Dow Jones and VCU to change their admissions process. While Smith and others might have been confused about the definition of minority, Pell said he hopes to get rid of any minority requirements at all.
“Ideally they would admit outstanding high school students without regarding race or ethnicity,” Pell said. “Or gender or anything else.”